Twin City Track Club Summer Track Meet

First, I would like to thank the Twin City Track Club for letting me join their Wednesday evening track meet. They hold their summer meets at the Hanes park track which is open to the public. This was my first visit to the track and Hanes Park so I was rather interested in checking it. I really appreciate how friendly all of the TCTC members were to me.

Their summer track events are slightly different from what we run here in Charlotte. They start with the mile, followed by 400, 800, 100, and then the 2 mile cross country. Other than the 100, the heats are run water fall style. They are pretty efficient at it. The entire event took about an hour to complete and this included the 2 mile event.

The Hanes Park track is an older track with an aged black rubber surface on it. There is a tennis court in the middle of the track. There is no shade at all on it. This explains why felt like I was a sweat box. The black surface just radiates up heat much the same way that Myers Park track radiates heat.

From the whistle my legs simply had no drive in them. I am not sure if it was the heat, the track meet the day before, or my diet. It could be all three of them. My first mile was in 5:24.49 which pretty much felt easy to me aerobically. I did notice that no one else runs more than one heat. I was the only one from the first heat heading to the line for the second heat. I actually didn’t drop off as much as I expected for the second mile with a 5:39.42.

I ran the second heat of the 400 and finished with a 74.75. I ran the second heat of the 800 in 2.44.35.

Interestingly, they run the 100 later in their sequence of events. They were telling me that they see lots of hamstring pulls during the 100. I image so. After 3 events longer events, the legs are starting to fatique. The 100 really yanks hard on those hamstrings.

They finish the evening off with a 2 mile cross county. The course is a combination of track, road, gravel road, grassy, single track trail, and dirt road. They describe the loop which I suspect was more for my benefit than everyone else. This gave me a rough idea of where we were running, but still there was some turns that I wasn’t sure about.

I caught up to Trent during the first mile but still let him set the pace and course until I knew the rest of it. Once we made the last turn, I passed him and cruised along the trail back to the finish in the 13:07.87.

Thinking ahead, this was a great precursor for my Ultimate Runner Competition next week. Getting the lay of the land helps reduce of the race day stress and lets me focus solely on running.

Again, I appreciate the TCTC guys for letting share in their summer track. I certainly enjoyed.

 

Sharing one thought at time,

The Cool Down Runner